Nightingale is an open-source monitoring platform focused exclusively on alerting, designed to complement tools like Grafana that specialize in visualization. Originally developed by DiDi.inc and donated to the China Computer Federation (CCF ODC) in 2022, it addresses the need for robust, flexible alerting without reinventing data collection. Nightingale ingests metrics and logs from existing systems—such as Prometheus, VictoriaMetrics, Elasticsearch, and OpenTSDB—via protocols like Remote Write, allowing organizations to leverage their current monitoring infrastructure while adding powerful alerting capabilities. It is ideal for teams managing distributed systems, multi-cloud environments, or edge deployments where alerting must remain functional during network outages. Unlike full-stack observability platforms, Nightingale intentionally avoids data collection, instead focusing on alert routing, noise reduction, and integration with notification channels.
Nightingale supports distributed alerting through its n9e-edge component, enabling local alert processing in remote or low-connectivity data centers. This architecture ensures critical alerts are not lost during network partitions. With built-in support for business groups, permission controls, and 20+ notification media (including SMS, DingTalk, Slack, and phone calls), Nightingale is tailored for enterprise-scale alert management where operational ownership and escalation policies matter. It also supports alert self-healing via script execution and integrates with existing dashboards, CMDBs, and enterprise systems through embedding APIs.
What You Get
- Multi-source data ingestion - Nightingale accepts metrics via Prometheus Remote Write, OpenTSDB, Datadog, and Falcon protocols, allowing seamless integration with existing collectors like Categraf without requiring a change in data pipelines.
- Distributed alerting with n9e-edge - For edge or disconnected environments, deploy n9e-edge to process alerts locally and forward them when connectivity is restored, ensuring no alert is lost during network outages.
- Alerting rules with Prometheus compatibility - Import and use existing Prometheus alerting rules directly. Define custom rules using PromQL or SQL for data sources like MySQL, Postgres, ClickHouse, and Loki.
- 20+ built-in notification channels - Send alerts via email, SMS, DingTalk, Slack, WeChat, Webhook, and more. Customize message templates using Go templating syntax for dynamic content.
- Alert self-healing - Automatically trigger scripts upon alert generation (e.g., cleanup disk space or restart services) using predefined command templates in the alert rule configuration.
- Business groups and RBAC - Organize alerts, dashboards, and rules by business units with granular permissions to control who can view or modify alerting policies.
- Event pipelines for automation - Process alarms through pipelines to add metadata, relabel events, or forward them to internal ticketing systems via custom plugins.
- Built-in dashboards and templates - Pre-built dashboards for OS, Redis, MySQL, Nginx, and other common services using Categraf’s metric conventions—optimized for Nightingale’s data model.
Common Use Cases
- Building a multi-cloud monitoring stack with existing Prometheus infrastructure - Organizations using Prometheus in multiple regions can connect their remote write endpoints to Nightingale to centralize alerting without replacing existing collectors, reducing operational overhead.
- Managing edge IoT deployments with intermittent connectivity - Deploy n9e-edge in remote factories or retail locations to ensure alerts are generated and queued locally, then synchronized when network connectivity resumes.
- Problem: Too many false alerts from legacy monitoring tools → Solution: Use Nightingale’s mute rules and event pipelines to filter noise before notification - Teams can suppress alerts during maintenance windows, deduplicate duplicates from multiple sources, and enrich events with metadata before sending to Slack or PagerDuty via webhook.
- DevOps teams managing 10k+ servers with business group segmentation - Large enterprises use Nightingale’s business groups to assign ownership of alerts by team (e.g., backend, database, infrastructure), ensuring the right on-call engineer receives relevant alerts without overload.
Under The Hood
Nightingale is a cloud-native alerting and monitoring platform designed to handle real-time event processing, notification delivery, and intelligent summarization of alerts. It integrates deeply with Prometheus and supports a wide range of enterprise communication tools for alerting.
Architecture
The system adopts a monolithic architecture with well-defined modules that separate concerns into components like alerting, notification, and core system logic. This modular approach enhances maintainability and scalability within a single codebase.
- Clear separation of concerns across distinct functional modules
- Layered design principles help manage complexity and improve extensibility
- Well-defined boundaries between core services and external integrations
Tech Stack
The project is built in Go, leveraging a robust ecosystem of libraries and tools tailored for backend services and system integration.
- Built entirely in Go with extensive use of standard library and third-party packages
- Integrates with Prometheus for metrics, MySQL for persistence, and enterprise tools like DingTalk and Lark
- Uses Makefiles and Goreleaser for build automation, with linting and formatting practices in place
- Includes unit and integration tests focused on core alerting and pipeline modules
Code Quality
The codebase reflects a mature Go project with consistent structure and functional scope, although some inconsistencies exist in error handling and test coverage.
- Moderate test coverage with emphasis on core modules and pipeline logic
- Error handling is present but not uniformly applied across all components
- Code follows general Go conventions with some legacy patterns and technical debt
- Consistent naming and modular structure support long-term maintainability
What Makes It Unique
Nightingale stands out through its combination of real-time alerting, AI-driven summarization, and flexible event processing pipelines.
- Extends Prometheus-based alerting with intelligent summarization capabilities
- Offers a highly extensible notification system supporting multiple enterprise platforms
- Combines traditional alerting with cloud-native event-driven architecture for modern observability